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The South Dakota State wrestling room has become eligible to serve as the training home of Olympic hopefuls.

USA Wrestling approved SDSU and coach Chris Bono as a Regional Training Site under the name Northern Plains Regional Training Center. There are less than 40 such centers in the country. (South Dakota has two, the other being the Legends of Gold in Beresford.)

The system has been set up to ensure that elite athletes have proper bases for training year-round. In order to become certified, a program has to meet a list of criteria pertaining to the level of coaching and competition. A site must have on its active roster at least four wrestlers that were considered national-team contenders within the last four years.

What's the payoff? Among other things, prospects that live within 200 miles of the site are allowed to practice there in the offseason. That means Bono may have a chance to work with top regional recruits before they make a college decision.

Many of the Regional Training Sites are based in college wrestling rooms. Wyoming and Northern Iowa are a couple of them that compete against the Jacks.

"That's huge for the program," Bono said. "It's part of the process of building (the SDSU program) up."